Next morning Moira set her phone to wake early. It was her Treasure Island day, and thirty thirsty tourists would be turning up eager to eat and get even more sloshed than they already were. Thank heavens Nell had agreed to help – if she hadn’t got too trolleyed by martinis with Stelios in the White Hotel the night before.

She showered and got dressed in clothes that to an untutored eye would have seemed remarkably like her pyjamas. Then she went to knock on Nell’s door, just in time noticing the Do Not Disturb notice hanging on the doorknob.

It was stupid, she knew, but the sign felt like a snub. The kind of snub geeky, awkward Moira had experienced hundreds of times as a child. Other children might have complained about not being picked for teams. Moira had never been picked for anything – birthday parties, friendships, gossipy sessions lying on beds, school discos. Here on Kyri, for the first time in her life, things were looking different. The others seemed to accept her as one of them.

Telling herself she was being ridiculous for minding the stupid sign, she grabbed her basket and various shopping bags and ran to the shops to fill them with meat, pitta, salad, pineapples, lemons and mangoes, hoping fervently that Takis would have remembered to deliver the liquor. The glasses and straws would be stored ready behind the bar.

As she passed the hotel again on her way to the beach she slipped in to reception to check. Ariadne was behind the desk, looking calm and pretty.

‘Is Takis around?’ Moira enquired.

‘Gone down to the beach with your bottles,’ was the reassuring reply before Ariadne turned back to advise a new arrival on the times of boat trips round the island. ‘Be sure they take you round the pirate caves,’ she counselled, with a knowing wink at Moira. ‘They’re the most famous thing on the island.’

She passed the gift shop, and got a wave from the lady who ran it. The young woman working in the supermarket, just laying out her wares to entice any tourists in off the ferry, said ‘Kalimera, kyria Moira.’ Moira smiled to herself. She really did feel part of Kyri’s everyday life. She was just walking past the usual group of old men sitting on the concrete edge of the flowerbed where they always congregated, when a thought came to her. She would buy them a coffee.

She doubled back to the hotel and approached Cassandra, who raised her eyes to heaven at the thought of more work. Yet she could tell Cassandra quite liked the idea too. ‘As long as it doesn’t get to be a habit. I don’t want those good-for-nothing old fools hanging about like yowling cats.’

‘I’ll tell them,’ grinned Moira. She put down her basket and carried the tray with coffee pot, milk and paper cups back out to the square.